For at least the past two decades, athletes caught using steroids or accused of doing so have been commonplace in the pro sports landscape. Yet compared to the well documented health problems due to doping in the East German Olympic program, very little has been mentioned in pro sports about severe medical problems due to steroids. Is it happening and not getting mentioned? Is it too soon for symptoms to appear yet? Or are steroids being used more “safely” then they were in the 70s?
Well, there’s Lyle Alzado which got a lot of pub when he died. There also seems to be quite a few major league baseball players that have come down with cancer over the past few years as well.
The amount of young deaths in the world of professional wrestling, where steroids flowed freely up until the early 90s and beyond, is well documented; not all the deaths due to steroids, but enough to raise some eyebrows.
There has supposedly been a lot more research into how to safely use the dozens of various steroids available over the past decade or two, and they aren’t all used for the same reasons. You read of people using steroids to help them with fat loss, others to help speed recovery from injury, the stereotypical rapid gains in muscle mass by using othes, and so on.
I think these drugs have been developed for use on patients suffering from various ailments… but I doubt there has been any proper research into their use as performance enhancers for professional athletes. Most likely this “safe-use” knowledge has been gleened from medical research papers and modificed by shady doctors to use as advice to athletes as a side-business. I’d say this knowledge is better than nothing or the athletes themselves experimenting with pharmacy refuse… but I doubt it’s as solid as it should be and the long-term effects of using these drugs as performance enhancers are still unknown.
I am not a doctor, and have no special knowledge of how steroids affect the body.
I can only note that, while Lyle Alzado believed his brain tumors were the result of his steroid use, most doctors at the time doubted that strongly.
I’m glad Alzado admitted what he did. IF there’s a silver lining, it’s that maybe, just maybe, his confession dissuaded some kids from using steroids. But in all likelihood, his death did NOT have any connection to his steroid use.
As for cancer among big league baseball players, the most prominent cancer victims have been guys like Curt Schilling and the late Tony Gwynn… and they suffered from mouth and throat cancers caused by tobacco use.
There is a very good documentary on Netflix called** Bigger, Stronger, Faster**. It deals with the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. If you’re interested in the subject I’d highly recommend it.
There are a few things to consider.
For one, there isn’t one anabolic steroid, there are over 50 to pick from. And they have varying positive and negative effects. Some cause lots of androgenic (masculinizing) effects, some cause almost none. Some cause lots of hair loss, some cause none (or almost none, I’m not sure). Some cause more liver stress than others. Some cause more mood disturbances than others. So yeah a woman taking a very androgenic steroids is going to see masculine features as a result. A woman taking primobolan or winstrol is not. I’m going to assume the east German government didn’t care about the well being of the athletes and didn’t consider the side effects of the drugs they were giving. I’ve met women who took steroids and didn’t have problems, but they took ones with little/no androgenic effects.
Another thing is that steroids are just one of many performance enhancing drugs, and it is more the others that can cause health problems. Growth hormone can cause cancer and diabetes. IGF-1 can cause cancer. EPO can cause heart attacks or stroke. Modern bodybuilders take tons of drugs aside from steroids. Growth hormone, IGF-1, insulin, amphetamines, diuretics, thyroid hormones, fertility drugs, breast cancer drugs, etc. Whatever health problems they have are probably more due to that stuff. Performance athletes (runners and cyclists among others) take things aside from steroids like EPO, cortisol, amphetamines, narcotics, growth hormone, etc. I don’t know if you can say the steroids are the cause of the side effects. If a cyclist has as heart attack, I’d wager the EPO and amphetamines are more likely the culprit than the steroids.
I don’t think (not 100% sure) anabolic steroids have been tied to cancer. But someone taking HGH or IGF-1 could increase their cancer risk.
The proper way for an amateur taking steroids to take them is for a short period of about 6-8 weeks alongside drugs to reduce side effects. Then they stop after their natural hormone production is running again.
So assume someone in their 20s does 3 cycles of 8 weeks each (with 3 weeks of post cycle drugs to restart natural testosterone production) over the course of 2 years. Will that cycle of 24 weeks of testosterone and 9-10 weeks of fertility drugs spread out over 100 weeks in that persons 20s cause health problems in that person’s 60s? I don’t know. I don’t know if that has been studied. I’d personally doubt it, but I’m just basing that on the fact that the body is constantly repairing itself and whatever damage you do in your 20s I’d assume will be fixed within a few years (assuming responsible use of the drugs did serious damage in the first place).
How about the concept that amateurs shouldn’t do steroids?
Do you just follow me around to insult me or something?
How about the concept that what adults do with their bodies is none of your business.
I think of most PEDs sort of like Viagra.
If it were all that bad for you, a lot more people would be dead, 'cuz everybody does 'em.
But it’s difficult to do really good clinical studies on banned substances.
For me as a clinician, the big downside about making them too readily available is that the user group would filter down to grade-schoolers, given the significance of sports in our world. And I do think use (which I think should be free, unfettered and unregulated for adults) is difficult to keep regulated to “adults only.”
When what adults do to their bodies affects me, yes it is my business - although to the best of my knowledge that doesn’t apply to steroids. It is, however, the reason that we have laws against drunk driving, because drunk driving can affect other people not involved in the driving drunk.
Last I heard, using anabolic steroids without prescription is against the law in the US, and against the code of conduct for sporting organizations world wide. You are advocating breaking the law and I find that uncool. You could argue it’s a stupid law, and unjust law (like Chief Pedant does to some extent), but giving a detailed schedule of use without at least mentioning it’s against the law is giving entirely the wrong impression of the ethics involved.
You even state you don’t know if what you listed was harmful or not, you’re just assuming it’s OK - um, yeah. That sounds like a plan.
BTW - no, I’m not “following you around”, it’s just that we happen to disagree on a lot of topics. You have your right to state your side, I have my right to state mine.
There is a difference between advocating drug use and discussing information about safer ways to use drugs. I once had a pharmacology professor tell us in all seriousness that if we wanted to commit suicide to not to commit suicide using tylenol because it caused liver damage and it was a miserable way to die. She wasn’t endorsing suicide, just sharing information. There are entire groups devoted to harm reduction with drug use and that is not the same thing as encouraging use. I don’t see how I actually advocated for their use, I described how people I consider responsible users have used them.
I’ve known various steroid users, most were pretty informed about the drugs, the side effects and how to compensate for the side effects. That is far superior to people using them anyway but doing so ignorantly.
I’m pretty sure everyone in this thread knows anabolic steroids are illegal and banned in sporting events. I didn’t see any point in mentioning that. On another note, apparently you can’t smoke on planes anymore. I’m glad they had that sign up to let me know.
I don’t personally know if there is long term damage. Seeing how people survive and recover from a lot in this life, and that our bodies are designed by evolution to survive famines, predators, temperature extremes, infections, chronic malnutrition, accidents, etc I’m going to assume some hormonal use in ones 20s isn’t a big deal over the course of a lifetime. But that is my view on the subject.
I do think it is worth mentioning that if an athlete or bodybuilder has health problems, I don’t think you can blame it on the steroids as professional level athletes likely abuse a half dozen different kinds of drugs and steroids are only one. Plus the level of steroid use by a professional bodybuilder is nothing compared to what someone using them as an amateur uses. An amateur may use 800mg of testosterone a week for 8 weeks, and do that 1-3 times in their lives. A professional bodybuilder may take several grams a week of testosterone 52 weeks a year for many years straight. And also take a wide range of drugs on top of that (insulin, growth hormone, thyroid hormone, diuretics). If that professional bodybuilder has health problems from his drug use you can’t look at that and say the amateur will face the same risks. That is like saying the health risks of someone who heavily abuses drugs and alcohol daily for 10 years straight can be used to determine the health risks of someone who gets drunk 1-2 nights a week for a couple years in college.
How do you know those people are actually “responsible”? What pharmacology training have they had? They read something on the internet or got by word of mouth from other “responsible”, untrained users?
Again - what was their training? They “seemed” OK? Did you run medical tests? Do they even know what they are actually using or just relying on their dealers to be honest? See, that’s one problem with using black market drugs - you’re never quite sure what you’re getting.
Based on what? These people “seem OK”? What is YOUR medical/pharmacological training? Are you a pharmacist? A doctor? What are your credentials in this subject, give a reason to trust you as being something other than just one more voice on the internet.
Why do you assume it’s NOT the steroids? Why do you think steroids are less harmful than those other drugs?
Where do you get your information on what the typical amateur uses in the way of performance enhancing drugs? Are you just guessing their use is less? Do you have any actual data to backup that assumption?
Nonetheless, there ARE real risks to getting “drunk 1-2 nights a week for a couple years”, especially when you start looking at things like binge drinkers. Just because drug use might be infrequent doesn’t mean it’s without risk.
“Athletes” who use steroids typically take them in doses far exceeding those of legitimate medical uses. Aside from problems like testicular atrophy (bad for your body producing natural hormones once the “athlete” stops using, and a possible cause of infertility), use/abuse of these drugs increases the risk of tendon rupture, liver abnormalities, a decrease of “good” cholesterol, an increase in “bad” cholesterol (both of which are associated with increased cardiovascular risk), potentially trigger or aggravate psychiatric disorders, and if injected risks of infections. These risks are documented in actual medical literature and readily available even to non-medical people like us.
Yes, the human body is resilient and able to heal from a lot of things, that doesn’t mean injury, including chemical injury, can’t have long term effects.
Darren Daulton
Ken Brett
Tug McGraw
Johnny Oates
John Vukovich
Gary Carter
Dan Quisenberry
Bobby Murcer
Dick Howser
Jose Mesa
All diagnosed and/or died of cancer the past 10 years. And I know I am missing many others.
Im not saying it was steroids, but considering baseball’s past, it does raise some eyebrows, no?
And yet endless millions of people do binge drink 1-2 nights a week and the vast majority are fine. Back when this subject interested me 10+ years ago I knew various people (including pharmacists, physicians, physiologists, biochemists) who were also interested in the subject. If you need to believe you need an MD or PharmD to give advice on the subject, I knew a few back in the day.
I never said I knew for sure that anabolic steroids were safe. You shouldn’t put words in my mouth. I said if a professional athlete uses 6-12 or more drugs and eventually gets sick, you can’t really point to one and say ‘that made him sick’. How would you know that? If someone uses a dozen drugs and has a heart attack (which again is rare even among people who abuse multiple performance enhancing drugs) how do you identify which one is the culprit?
The evidence on steroids seems inconclusive. I do not know if any studies have been done where people engage in what I’d consider responsible steroid usage (if they are going to use them, at least try to use them responsibly) then followed their health risks for decades. The side effects you list like testicular atrophy or liver damage are generally temporary and as I said, people who know more about this subject than you are well aware of them and have ways to compensate for those effects. Certain drugs are worse for certain side effects, and certain other drugs can be used to compensate for those side effects.
According to this
nandrolone did not affect HDL levels, while an unnamed steroid did (looking at the actual study, many people used multiple drugs at once). As I said earlier, there are 50 odd different anabolic steroids and they affect the body differently. According to that study an unnamed steroid caused cholesterol alterations while nandrolone did not. Again, the followed up for 6 weeks. I do not know what happens to your LDL and HDL levels in your 60s and 70s if you take steroids for 8 weeks in your 20s. I don’t believe that has been studied.
If you look at the study, HDL declined during drug usage. They say ‘by 6 weeks it had not normalized’. What htey do not mention is that levels were rebounding from what they were pre-drug usage. HDL-C levels started at 1.08, and dropped to 0.43 after drug usage. After 6 weeks off the drugs the levels had rebounded to 0.89. So yes if you use 6 weeks as the cutoff point you can say levels didn’t rebound, however by 6 weeks post cycle people had reversed most of the changes to cholesterol levels.
Even if you could conclusively prove that responsible steroid use (as opposed to uneducated use) causes permanent health risks, a lot of things in life cause permanent health risks. Unmarried people have higher death and disease risks than married people. Workaholics have higher health risks than people with more balanced lives. People can make their own decisions.
Dick Howser died 30 years ago and he played long before the steroid era.
Plenty aren’t fine, plenty get into accidents after which they may not be fine or innocent non-drinking bystanders might not be fine. There’s a risk to drinking alcohol. There’s a risk to mixing alcohol and other drugs, including OTC ones like Tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol. There are medical conditions that don’t play well with alcohol. Anyone choosing to drink should be aware of these risks before proceeding.
If YOU are not an MD or PharmD no, you should NOT be “giving advice” on drug usage to other people, and especially not over the internet.
Then why are you advocating for their use when you don’t know if they’re safe or not? You guess and assume and if you turn out to be wrong, well, I guess it just sucks to be anyone who took your advice, right?
By consulting medical research on the long-term effects of drugs sometimes it is possible to pinpoint a direct cause, or at least a high likelihood one. Epo is associated with strokes and blood clots. Steroids are associated with crap cholesterol, which is likewise associated with hardening of the arteries. And so on.
In your opinion, right?
So when did you get the credentials to credible determine what “responsible” steroid usage might be? On what do you base your opinion? Have you done and research? Read any research? Or is it rectal grasp and retrieve?
On what do you base this notion the effects are tempoaray? What research or studies are you referring to? Or is this more rectal grasp and retrieve?
You reference ONE steroid out of dozens… are you assuming that’s the one all the amateurs are using, or are you simply ignorant of the rest?
Right… you advocated a schedule of self-administration saying it would probably be alright - that hardly seems to be informing anyone of potential risks. Sure, people can (and will) make their own decisions, but don’t you think those should be informed decisions?